Astroworld organisers foresaw overcrowding before deadly concert crush, court documents show

A miscalculation by Astroworld organisers contributed to too many people being present at the 2021 music festival where a fatal crowd surge at rapper Travis Scott’s performance led to the deaths of 10 attendees and over 4,000 injuries, new court documents show.

Obtained by Houston Landing, the documents show that the festival’s security director, Seyth Boardman, had concerns barely 10 days before about how they would fit 50,000 people near the stage.

“I feel like there is no way we are going to fit 50k in front of that stage,” Boardman wrote to the operations director. “Especially with all of the trees!”

The families of those who died at Astroworld submitted the documents with the alleged conversations along with other supporting information as evidence in the mass civil litigation they filed against the festival’s organisers.

Expert evidence submitted by the plaintiffs claims that the festival planners miscalculated a state fire code that prevents overcrowding; the mandate said each attendee must have seven square feet of room within the venue, while the organisers thought it was five.

This resulted in a crowd of roughly 50,000 crammed into a space meant for only 34,500 people.

The trees also obscured vantage points, which resulted in people crowding into areas with better sight lines.

On the day of the festival, organisers were concerned about gatecrashers from earlier in the day. There was also talk of Scott’s performance being cancelled.

“I would pull the plug but that’s just me,” Reece Wheeler, one of the organisers, had written from the festival command centre, a message that was made public last year. “Someone’s going to end up dead.”

“It’s the hundreds without bands on the perimetre. We are going to be absolutely screwed when the sun goes down,” Shawna Boardman, another organiser, had written, warning about the crowds of people without tickets who usually gather around the venue’s exterior perimeter.

The defence has not yet filed their expert reports in court.

A court filing from 2022 showed that, excluding those who died, 4,921 people suffered injuries in some capacity at Scott’s performance in Houston, Texas on 5 November 2021. A total of 10 people, between the ages of nine and 27, died from injuries suffered after a fatal surge in the crowd at the festival.

The civil case is set to start in May, and defendants include Travis Scott, multinational concert company Live Nation, and venue manager ASM.

An independent investigation into the Astroworld tragedy was rejected by Harris County commissioners in 2021.

Scott has had to deal with several lawsuits since the performance, and has settled some. However, there are still multiple active civil cases.

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